23rd EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting, EWGT 2020, 16-18September 2020,

Paphos, Cyprus

Developing and transferring safety performance functions

for two-lane rural roads in Indonesia
Widodo Budi Dermawana* , Tri Tjahjonoa, Martha Leni Siregara
a
University of Indonesia, Jalan Kampus UI, Kota Depok, Jawa Barat 16424, Indonesia

Abstract

Road safety is one of the most important factors in transportation performance. One enactment to improve road safety is to reduce
the number of traffic accidents. Accident prediction models also called as Safety Performance Functions (SPFs) represent one of
the best tools for road safety in order to estimate the number of crashes in a specific road section. From the previous research, the
development of accident prediction models has been carried out in Indonesia with very limited objectives and mostly focus on
urban roads and toll roads. The SPFs, provided in the HSM, need to be adapted to the traffic and road conditions of Indonesia such
as traffic compositions that dominated by motorcycle and the sub-standard road condition that are less than 7 meters wide. Several
SPFs were developed using three models; Negative Binomial (NB), zero-inflated NB, and Poisson lognormal models. The data in
this study is obtained from 8 provinces, covering a 9-year period, from 2008 to 2016. The results obtained from the three statistical
approaches showed that Poisson lognormal model provided a better model fit compared to NB and zero-inflated NB models.
Keywords: Accident prediction models; Safety performance function; Highway safety manual; Rural roads; NB

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 23rd EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting.

1. Introduction

Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world with more than 260 million populations. The country's
economic growth has led to a rise in demand for transport and car ownership. Road accidents in Indonesia are arising
on a growing trend in the previous decade. Out of 109.215 cases of traffic accidents recorded in 2018, 29.472 people
died, 13.315 people severely injured and 130.571 people minorly injured (BPS, 2018). There are 135,883 motorcyclists
that are involved in a traffic accident. The motorcycle, typically small-sized vehicles with engine capacity ranges
between 100-150 cc, is the most popular mode of transportation in Indonesia. With its high mobility on the road, most
people use motorcycles for many purposes including work, education, shopping, and leisure either for short or long-
distance trips. Compared to other transportation modes, the number of motorcycle crashes is relatively high (Haworth
et al., 2009). Fatality risk among motorcyclists is about 30 times higher and serious injuries are about 8 times higher
compared to other groups of drivers (Huang, 2004). Most roads in Indonesia have no special lanes dedicated to
motorcycle. In addition, motorcycle user behavior such as speeding and maneuvering between vehicles can cause a
high proportion of motorcycle accidents and casualties. From the previous research, the development of accident
prediction models has been carried out in Indonesia with very limited objectives and mostly focus on urban roads and
toll roads. Moreover, compared to urban roads, rural roads are more prone to accidents. Rural roads are usually
characterized by low traffic volumes, generally high speeds, fewer conflict turns, and fewer conflicts with pedestrians.
Accidents that occur on rural roads generally occur at high speeds
Today, the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) Prediction Model is the most commonly used approach to road safety
analysis as a transferable safety performance function (SPFs) that were mainly developed using parametric negative
binomial (NB) models (Highway Safety Manual 2010). Previous studies suggest that applying the HSM outside the

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +62 818 778881

E-mail address: widodo.budi@ui.ac.id

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 23rd EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting.
 Author name / EWGT 2020 2

United States and Canada should be done with caution. In constructing such SPFs, a limited number of variables were
used. In addition, a set of basic assumptions about basic road geometry conditions is used. These default values of the
base conditions require either a calibration method or site-specific SPFs development. In this case, the number of
motorcycle users in Indonesia should be properly considered since motorcycle crashes comprise a very high proportion
of the overall vehicle fatalities. Another concern that needs to be considered is the road condition. According to data
from the Ministry of Public Works (PUPR) in 2017, the length of national roads reached 47,017 km with good
conditions 51.76%, moderate 38.59%, lightly damaged 5.76% and severely damaged 3.89%. In term of the national
standard road width of 7 meters, more than 25% of the roads in Indonesia are sub-standard. Thus, the site-specific
conditions relating to the characteristics of the Indonesian road are settled.

2. Methodology

A wide range of statistical models have been used to develop safety performance functions (Lord and Mannering,
2010). Poisson and negative binomial (NB) modeling have been extensively used due to the inherent nature of crash
data being random, discrete, and non-negative (Wang et al., 2019). Poisson models were considered a useful starting
point for modeling crash count data but its limitation lies in the assumption that the variance of the dependent variable
must be equal to the mean (Shankar et al., 1995). As a result, many researchers have adopted NB Modeling to analyze
overdispersed crash frequency data (Farid et al., 2019). In this paper, we develop and transfer two-lane rural road
segment SPFs of 8 provinces and develop NB, zero-inflated NB, Poisson lognormal models. All SPFs are transferred
to each province and their predictive performance is evaluated to determine which model type is the most transferable.
In this study, the data is obtained from the Eastern Indonesia National Roads Improvement Project (EINRIP) which
collected the data for 8 years (2008-2016) within identical locations in 8 provinces of Indonesia namely: Bali, NTB
(Sumbawa), NTT (Flores), Central Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi, West Kalimantan and South
Kalimantan. The objective of the Eastern Indonesian National Road Improvement Project (EINRIP) is to support
economic and social development in Eastern Indonesia through a program of improvements to approximately 400 km
of national roads in the region. The project involved reconstruction and resurfacing, widening and minor realignments,
which were expected to reduce vehicle operating costs and journey times.
The accident data collection is supported with the established Integrated Road Safety Management System
(IRSMS) developed by Indonesian National Traffic Police Corps (INTPC) in collaboration with funded by the World
Bank under the Strategic Road Infrastructure Project (SRIP). It aims to acquire specific and accurate data of traffic
accidents throughout Indonesia with a web-based program. Thus, report of traffic accident can be directly received
through IRSMS programmed tablet device. The system included a facility for validation of crash information. Only
the validated crash details are included in statistics produced by the system. The system also includes a wide variety
of output possibilities such as Google Maps or Open Street Map.

References

Cafiso, S., Di Silvestro, G., & Di Guardo, G., 2012. Application of Highway Safety Manual to Italian divided multilane highways. Procedia-Social
and Behavioral Sciences, 53, 910-919.
Farid, A., Abdel-Aty, M., & Lee, J., 2019. Comparative analysis of multiple techniques for developing and transferring safety performance functions.
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 122, 85-98.
Haworth, N., Greig, K., & Nielson, A., 2009. Comparison of risk taking in moped and motorcycle crashes. Transportation research record, 2140(1),
182-187.
Huang, B., & Preston, J., 2004. A literature review on motorcycle collisions: Final report. Transport Studies Unit: Oxford University.
Lord, D., & Mannering, F., 2010. The statistical analysis of crash-frequency data: a review and assessment of methodological alternatives.
Transportation research part A: policy and practice, 44(5), 291-305.
Shankar, V., Mannering, F., Barfield, W., 1995. Effect of roadway geometrics and environmental factors on rural freeway accident frequencies.
Accident Analysis & Prevention. 27, 371–389
Tjahjono, T., 2009. The effect of traffic and road conditions to the fatality rates on rural roads in Eastern Indonesia. In Proceedings of the Eastern
Asia Society for Transportation Studies Vol. 7 (The 8th International Conference of Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, 2009) (pp.
 Author name / EWGT 2020 3

400-400). Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies.

Wang, K., Zhao, S., & Jackson, E., 2019. Functional forms of the negative binomial models in safety performance functions for rural two-lane
intersections. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 124, 193-201.
World Health Organization, 2018. Global status report on road safety 2018. World Health Organization.